Trouble is brewing for Kenya's tea growers. For its own sake, the government needs to do more than sugarcoat their pain

The UK is cutting down on booze. Recent reports suggest that Britons under 30 are drinking half as much as they did in 2000; the average adult, who necked 173 litres of alcoholic beverages in 2005, quaffed only 135 litres in 2014.

The news must come as a relief – and not just to the UK's Health and Social Care Information Centre, who came up with some of these stats. Tea exporters around the world, hit hard by a 30 percent price drop since March, are hoping soberer habits will make their key markets thirstier for hot brews.

Chief among them are Kenya’s farmers. The eastern African nation is the world's largest exporter of the precious leaf (India and China produce more, but consume the bulk of it locally). At 22 percent of export revenues, tea is Kenya’s largest earner of dollars, which the country needs to import other foodstuff. About half a million of small growers live off the crop.

The government itself doesn’t yet see reasons for alarm. Kenya raked in $1.23 billion in tea exports last year, a 23 percent increase on 2014. The country also benefitted from cheap oil – of which it is a net importer – with savings contributing a sliver to dollar reserves. Kenya’s GDP is expected to grow 6.1 percent in 2016, compared to 3 percent for the whole of Sub-Saharan Africa.

But the country's smallholder farmers, who produce 60 percent of Kenya’s total tea output, have a different story to tell. While exports reached records in 2015, a 25 percent tax on earnings has meant less money in growers' pockets. And there is no guarantee that last year’s performance will be repeated: higher prices at auction – partly due to a drought in Kenya – and a weaker currency played a key role in boosting export revenues.

Observers are not optimistic. At its annual meeting in Kenya last month, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation warned that prices could remain depressed for at least a decade. This is partly because new countries have started producing tea, causing a supply glut. But it is also because volatile weather, exacerbated by climate change, leads farmers to maximise output in the good years to cushion themselves against bad ones.

Kenya stands to lose more than its peers. It is not the cheapest producer out there: farmers complain that labour costs are higher in the country than in Rwanda or Uganda, two relative newcomers. It could easily lose market share. Crucially, the highlands where its tea is produced are among the regions most vulnerable to global warming. The FAO estimates that Kenya could lose 40 percent of the land suitable for tea planting as a result of climate change. Harvest quality is also likely to suffer.

What can be done to support smallholders? The government is promising to cut taxes, grant more planting licenses and subsidise fertilisers. In a bid to support prices, it also wants to encourage domestic demand – locals only consume 5 percent of the country's production – and diversify export markets.

Such fixes may help farmers weather price volatility. But they fall short of preparing smallholders to the certainty of climate change. Planting trees to create shade, better water management, higher-yielding crops and greater use of biofuels to dry tea leaves are among the solutions being promoted by resilience-minded NGOs. The government needs to nurture them as well if it is to get to the root of the problem.